WHAT IF…I damage my house with my car?

Sometimes we get the strangest calls at our insurance office in Bellbrook, Ohio.  Last week we received a call from a policyholder with a unique problem.  As he was pulling his car into his attached garage, somehow the car got away from him and rammed straight through the garage into the family room wall.  He was calling to report damage to his car and to his house!

If this happened to you, would you be covered?  And how would your insurance handle this?  Do you think this would be considered one insurance claim – or two?

Fortunately, our client had all of his insurance with one company, Farmers.  This simplified things a little bit.  He only had one phone call to make to report what happened.  He knew that his auto policy would cover the damage to his car (since he carried collision coverage), but what about the damage to his house?  He wanted to know if his auto policy would also pay for the repairs needed to the wall of his home.

The helpful person at Farmers HelpPoint let him know that the damage to his home would need to be covered under his homeowner’s policy rather than his auto insurance policy.  Our client called me to confirm this, and I explained that you cannot be liable under your auto policy for damage to your own property.  If he had inadvertently driven his car into his neighbor’s house, this would be covered under his auto policy, but since it was his own home, the expense for repairing his house would come under his homeowner’s policy.

The repairs are already underway, and everything should be back to normal soon.  Thankfully, no one was injured from this bizarre incident.  It gave me a chance to meet with our client and review his insurance policies to make sure everthing was up to date.  Now he can rest assured knowing that Farmers is doing everything possible to get him back where he belongs.